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A notice at the Island Pacific Supermarket in Panorama City which tells customers to bring their own bags.

Jackie David, right, the enforcement officer for the city of Los Angeles’ plastic bag ban, talks with Jessie Chong, assistant manager at the Island Pacific Supermarket in Panorama City.

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Jackie David, the enforcement officer for the city of Los Angeles' plastic bag ban, offers up re-usable bags at a local market. David scours the San Fernando Valley making sure store are in compliance with the new law. ( Photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News )

Jackie David is the sweet natured enforcement officer for the city of Los Angeles' plastic bag ban. David scours the San Fernando Valley making sure store are in compliance with the new law. ( Photo by David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News )

PANORAMA CITY >> Clad in a white top and jeans, Jackie David entered Lanark Market on a gritty strip of Van Nuys Boulevard last week and casually asked the woman at the counter if she hands out plastic bags.

When co-owner Jackie Saleh said she did and showed her the now illicit items, David’s friendly demeanor turned stern.

“You’re not supposed to hand out single-use plastic bags; you’re aware of that,” David, a Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation employee who acts as a kind of undercover enforcement officer for the city’s plastic bag ordinance, told her. “I think I stopped by here a while back.”

Saleh, who said she was just trying to get rid of these now prohibited bags, seemed surprised to hear that fines could be levied: up to $100 for the first offense following a written warning, up to $200 for the second and then up to $500 for every subsequent violation.

“OK, no problem,” Saleh told David. “They’re gone.”

The city’s program promoting and enforcing the ordinance —— which bans many plastic carryout bags and requires a 10-cent fee on each paper carryout bag requested at food retailers —— has been so far “very successful,” David said. Larger markets and grocery stores have had to comply with the new rules intended to protect the environment since Jan. 1 and smaller ones, including mini-marts and 7-Elevens, have had to comply as of July 1. David estimated compliance in the San Fernando Valley to be more than 95 percent so far but local stores are offering mixed reviews.

After David left the store, Saleh admitted that she felt the ordinance was “a bit of an inconvenience,” but added that she knows “there’s a reason for it.” She also acknowledged that she wasn’t sure where to find the right kind of bags or how much they would cost them to purchase.

“It’s OK,” she said. “We’ll get used to it.”

At nearby Island Pacific Market, employee Jessie Chong estimated that about half of their customers bring their own reusable bags into this popular Filipino market. Others were seen buying thick reusable plastic bags, which are permitted under the ordinance, for 20 cents or paper bags for 10 cents. Quite a few customers were also seen putting their groceries into shopping carts so they could unload them directly in their cars.

Chong said it was good that so many people were buying the reusable plastic bags since the store was making a profit. But people have also been caught putting items in reusable bags they bring in and then walking out the store without paying for them. Chong said their staff caught a woman last week who tried to steal $37 worth of seafood, mainly shrimp and tilapia filet, by filling up such a bag.

“We said ‘if you don’t pay, we’re going to call the police,’ ” Chong recalled, showing a reporter a photo on his cellphone of the woman paying at the cash register.

While theft has always been an issue, “now it’s more easy because of the bags” customers bring into the store, he said. Management is even entertaining hiring a security guard to better monitor the situation, he said.

Since the ordinance went into effect, theft has also been an increasing concern at Rite Aid on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, Assistant Manager Keith Krolak said. He estimates that the average amount of theft has at least doubled to just under $1,000 a week. Unless employees physically see someone putting something in their bag and then not paying for it, they are not allowed to search them or confront them, he said.

“It’s a huge concern in terms of loss of what we have every week,” Krolak said.

Detective Doer Becker of the Los Angeles Police Department West Valley Division said they haven’t necessarily noticed a higher number of shoplifting complaints. However, they do have a harder time filing commercial burglary charges, which results in a in stiffer sentence than petty theft, because it’s now harder to prove intent.

Before the ordinance, criminals often brought in large bags in order to steal items. Today, since so many people are equipped with them, they can and often do claim that they simply forgot to go by the cash register, he said.

“We’ve lost that argument (about intent) in a lot of cases,” Becker said. “It just makes our job more difficult. It’s a new hurdle we have to overcome.”

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.